


Mary Celeste

by Sholio



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25378807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: The team finds a crashed alien spaceship, and Owen gets a second chance. Of sorts.
Relationships: Gwen Cooper & Jack Harkness & Owen Harper & Ianto Jones & Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper & Toshiko Sato
Comments: 8
Kudos: 57
Collections: Eat Drink and Make Merry 2020





	Mary Celeste

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edonohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).



"Look on the bright side, kids," Jack said with the manic cheerfulness that Owen had come to dread; it never meant anything good. "We haven't had an alien spaceship to play with since ... when was the last one?"

"A _piece_ of an alien spaceship," Ianto clarified, because of course he did.

"I think we're bearing too far left," Tosh reported, nose buried in her scanner. "We need to go right more."

"I think that's a bog, though," Gwen said dubiously.

"Ugh," Owen muttered.

It was, of course, in the sodding middle of nowhere, and furthermore it was raining, because of _bloody Wales._ They'd been traipsing through the woods for the better part of two hours, following walking trails that wound through copses and pastures and dales and other bits of stupidly named, rain-soaked scenery that sounded more scenic in tourist brochures and not when it was eleven-sodding-thirty at night and pitch dark and you were trying not to end up with thorns embedded in your skin for the rest of eternity.

By the time they actually found it, half the team wasn't speaking to the other half, Owen _had_ in fact managed to get an enormous thorn rammed through his thumb (another hole to superglue, fan-bloody-tastic), Jack had been chased up a tree by an angry bull while they were crossing a field (probably thought he was going to try and shag the cows), and Gwen had fallen to her waist in a mud hole, because no one in this sodding excuse for a country knew how to maintain a proper walking trail.

But even in the rain, lit up by their torches, Owen had to admit that the thing was pretty fucking cool. It might be only a piece of the ship (it had broken up in the atmosphere; most of it had either burned up or gone down in the middle of the Atlantic) but even this piece of it was considerably larger than Owen's flat. It was hard to see exactly how big it was, because iceberg-style, only part of it showed; it had left a great furrow through the trees and buried itself in the side of a hill. The curved side of the thing, gleaming and wet in the torchlight, was some sort of opalescent gray and didn't reflect like either plastic or metal.

"Trenthonian, third dynasty," Jack declared, staring up at the curve of the ship with his hands planted on his hips.

"Oh bollocks, you can't tell that just by looking at its arse end in the rain," Owen said, because it wouldn't do to look too excited or anything. Tosh was excited enough for the lot of them; she was practically exploding over the idea of all that alien tech right in front of them.

"Want to take bets?" Jack asked brightly. Even wet, he still looked somehow rakish; it was unfair.

"There's still a very faint power signature," Tosh reported, shielding her scanner from the rain with a cupped hand. "I think there's part of the engine core in there. And it's still working!"

"Whoa, hold on," Jack said, catching Tosh's arm as she started forward. "There could be defenses, radiation leakage ... We don't know for sure. I'll take a look."

"Immune to radiation, are you?" Ianto said, somewhere in the intersection between sarcastic and worried.

"Won't kill me," Jack said cheerfully. "Or at least if it does, it won't for long."

They all watched him walk down the hill toward the gleaming curve of the ship, making Owen realize it was even bigger than he'd previously thought.

"What are we supposed to do if it _does_ kill you?" Gwen shouted after him. Owen could actually hear the unspoken "you egotistical sodding wanker" in her tone. This was one of the things he loved about Gwen.

"Go back to the Hub, get radiation gear, come back and get me out," Jack called back. "Obviously."

"Oh, obviously," Ianto muttered, fidgeting as he watched.

Owen had no intention of indulging Jack, so he went to see about the ankle Gwen had twisted when she fell in the mud hole, but he did keep glancing over his shoulder because he wouldn't want to miss it if Jack got zapped by a defense system or something.

But there was no zapping and no explosions. Jack wandered around the base of the ship; from here Owen could see the glinting lights of his wrist strap wossit and a spare PDA as he did tech things.

"What are the chances," Gwen murmured, also keeping an eye on Jack as Owen prodded her ankle, "that he's down there not so much checking it's safe, as checking if there's anything he doesn't want us to see."

"Don't say that where Ianto can hear you."

"I can hear both of you," Ianto said, sounding testy.

"But yeah," Owen said, making no effort to keep his voice down. "That's our Jack. Pointlessly mysterious to the end."

"I can't believe there is an entire wealth of unknown technology down there and you lot are bickering about Jack," Tosh said without looking up from her scanner. 

Before things could degenerate further, Jack called up the hill, "Looks safe! Come on down."

Owen gave Gwen a hand up. She was only limping slightly, but he lagged to pack up his kit, so he was bringing up the rear by the time they all made it down through the long, soggy grass and weeds on the hill.

A smell of damp ash still lingered around the ship; it had seared the trees and grasses when it hit, and Owen had to reluctantly admit that without the pissing-down rain, they might also be dealing with a forest fire. Jack was standing in front of what was obviously, to use the technical term, some manner of door, fiddling with the wrist strap. It opened just as they got there, irising outward from the center like a bloody BBC effect.

"Guns out," Jack murmured, drawing his. "We don't know who's in there."

That settled the mood. As soon as they stepped through the door, torches up and guns at the ready, lights came on — soft and medium-bright, with a pinkish tinge. Colors meant to soothe the human nervous system, Owen thought, and wondered if it worked the same for whoever had built this place. For all he knew, maybe these vaguely sunsetish colors made aliens alert and less sleepy, as opposed to the slightly soporific effect they had on humans, scientifically speaking.

Well ... living humans. Not like he had diurnal rhythms anymore. He wasn't cold from the rain, or tired from the walk. Not hungry either, except in a vague and distant way that he could never satisfy, as if his body remembered what it was to want food and sleep, but it would remain forever out of reach. When the team had parceled out snacks earlier (brought by Ianto, the ever-prepared) Owen sat it out, just like he sometimes went along for team drinks that he couldn't drink, or jealously watched them eat pizza he couldn't share.

It was what it was. A certain improvement over being in the dark. And to be fair, there were times — hours at a time, even — when he didn't think about it: lost in a project, or even enjoying, vicariously and without (much) bitterness, the happiness of the people around him ... at Gwen's wedding, say.

But if he ever managed to forget for too long, there were the team snack breaks; there was the way Gwen's twisted ankle would heal (she was hardly limping now), but if it had been him instead, he might be splinting a floppy ankle for the rest of his existence.

"Clear up here," Jack shouted back. Gwen looked back for Owen, and he took a few quick steps to join her.

The corridors canted at an awkward angle, not enough to make it impossible to walk, but it lent a slightly drunken feeling to the experience, especially accompanied by the pastel lighting. About as close as he could get to being drunk these days ... and, sod it all, that was enough maudlin for one evening.

Jack, Ianto, and Tosh had paused to wait for them at a split in the gently curving corridor. One way led up; the other was angled downward. There was definitely more ship than had been visible from the outside. 

"Split up?" Gwen asked quietly. "We still don't know if there are any hostiles on board."

"I don't think there's anyone alive on here," Tosh said. "I don't see any life signs, or at least nothing I'm reading as such."

"It's an old design," Jack said. "Probably a derelict, running on backup power and some sort of autopilot taking it to the nearest habitable planet. That's why it came in so low and fast, like there was nobody at the controls. Because there wasn't."

He glanced around; the lights were coming on where they went but dying out behind, isolating them in a little bubble of light. Owen found that they'd all drawn closer together.

"Except maybe zombies," Owen said, and Gwen scowled at him.

"The only zombie around here is you," Ianto said.

"Oi, we weren't going to use the Z word in reference to members of Torchwood."

Tosh cleared her throat. "The power signature I'm reading is that way." She pointed to the downward-pointed corridor. "An engine room, maybe?"

"Ianto, with me," Jack decided. "You three, go down and check out that power signature."

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do," Owen said as they separated, with a meaningful wink, and Ianto rolled his eyes.

"As if we'd want to."

With that, they went down. Gwen took point, Tosh was in the middle with her scanner, and Owen at the rear. He felt the dark pressing on his heels. The deeper they went, the eerier it was. A ghost ship, he thought. All those years, centuries, millennia in the black.

"Oh!" Tosh said brightly, and he looked up ahead. They'd come out in some sort of chamber. There was a floor-to-ceiling pillar giving off a soft pink radiance, and not much else.

"Radiation?" Gwen asked, as Tosh swept it with her scanner.

"There's certainly something." Tosh frowned over her readings. "I've never seen anything quite like this before. It's definitely a power source. A backup generator, perhaps? I think it's almost depleted. Providing light and environmental controls for us is straining it to its limits. There's no telling how much longer it'll last."

It was the mention of environmental controls that made Owen notice that the dizzy, disoriented feeling of the corridors being oriented at an angle to gravity had vanished. It felt like he was standing perfectly upright, though he knew that he wasn't.

"Artificial gravity?" he asked, and Tosh nodded and gave him a quick smile that warmed him unexpectedly; it was her little "oh, you're smart too!" smile, and he'd always liked it.

"Weird," Gwen murmured, wandering along the walls and examining banks of dark, defunct equipment and unlit screens embedded in the wall.

"How's it going down there?" Jack asked over comms.

"No zombies," Owen said. "There's a bleeding great pillar though, glowing and everything, you'd like it. What about you?"

"We found some kind of gym and a sort of kitchen," Ianto said. "No bridge; that must be on one of the bits that went down in the ocean."

"No signs of fighting," Jack said. "And no bodies."

"Ooh," Gwen murmured, and gave the other two a quick smile. " _Mary Celeste_. You know, the American ship that disappeared and then turned up, with no one on —"

"It is _not_ the _Mary Celeste_ ," Ianto said, with a certain calm irritability as if he'd also had a similar debate with Jack. "We don't know what happened here. It's a derelict ship from a long time ago."

"All right, here's the deal," Jack said. "There's no one alive on this ship, we can't just leave it out here in the woods for anyone to stumble across, and it's too big to move. As soon as it's daylight out here, there's a risk of discovery. You get to look at it until morning, and then we blow it up."

"What? No!" Tosh protested. "I've only just — you don't even _know_ how interesting the readings are down here! We've found the power supply, and I don't know what it is. I can't even imagine how it works. It's putting off a kind of radiation I've never seen before."

Gwen and Owen, as one, turned to look at the glowing pink pillar, and then began to retreat. Owen grabbed Tosh's shoulder and tried to pull her back.

"Owen!" she said, trying to twist away.

"Mysterious radiation, Tosh!"

"It doesn't seem to be doing anything harmful," she protested, but let him hustle her to a more distant location at the doorway.

"Jack, is it safe for us to be down here?" Gwen asked. 

_For the living people anyway,_ Owen's brain added, unbidden; it wasn't like irradiating himself was going to be harmful, except for making team movie nights more awkward if he glowed in the dark.

"How should I know?" Jack said over the radio. "Do I look like an engineer? If it might be dangerous, stay away from it, and that's an order. If it might be leaking out into the surrounding countryside, we blow it up right now."

"It won't hurt me," Owen said. He held out a hand for Tosh's PDA. "I can get some readings for you, Tosh. You girls can go up top with Jack and Ianto, where it's safer."

Tosh stubbornly hung onto the PDA. "If it's unsafe for us, it's unsafe for you, you ..."

"Wanker," Gwen helpfully supplied.

"What's it going to do to me anyway?" Owen pointed out, reasonably, he felt.

"We don't _know,"_ Tosh said, pulling back on the PDA.

"We can send someone back to the Hub for protective equipment," Jack pointed out over the radio. There was a tiny, resigned, but audible sigh from Ianto. "Oh, and food. Because if we're going to be out here all night, we need pizza."

***

Ianto and Gwen went in search of food, protective gear, and also a way back to the car that didn't involve two hours of slogging through cow pastures. Owen had a brief look at the gym and kitchen that Jack and Ianto had found (no signs of hanky panky, but there weren't any comfortable-looking-for-sex surfaces up here either, just some of what might be gym equipment for people with alarming numbers of limbs and also some narrow benches along the walls). Jack, still dead set on blowing things up in a very American kind of way, was primarily interested in trying to see if he could find any sort of hidden control room up here to set a self-destruct.

Meanwhile, Owen and Tosh investigated the light pillar.

"You should really wait for Gwen and Ianto to get back with PPE," Tosh said fretfully as they sat together in the lounge area of the gym, where there were some low, uncomfortable couches or benches. She had her head bowed over two PDAs, pairing them so his could send readings back to hers. "Owen, I'm serious, if it seems to be doing anything to you, anything at all, you'll get back up here, yeah?"

"'Course," Owen said, who had no intention of doing anything of the sort. He didn't actually think it was going to affect him, and even if it did, what was it going to do, kill him? Anyway, Tosh was right that whatever charge was powering it could run out at any moment, making it impossible to get decent readings of what it was like when it was running. And he was curious too.

Tosh went on down with him most of the way to the energy chamber, which in Owen's opinion defeated the purpose of keeping her safely away from the radiation in the first place.

"Oh, don't be like that, there's hardly any radiation at all out here in the hallway," she protested. "And this way if anything goes wrong, I can call Jack."

"Jack's listening on the radio; hi," Jack said.

"Hi, now go away." Owen took the prepared PDA from Tosh. She hung onto it briefly, and when she finally let go, her hand brushed over his in a way that he probably would have found quite nice if he'd been able to feel anything at all.

"Owen ..." She reached up and deactivated her comm. Slightly nervous, he did likewise. But she hesitated, not saying anything at all, searching his face with her eyes before she finally took a short, quick breath. "Don't do anything unsafe," she said.

"You know me. Model of personal safety and so forth."

"Owen," Tosh sighed, but it was better seeing the look of exasperation on her face than the worry that had been there a moment ago.

He flicked the comm back on and went into the chamber. The pink radiance seemed dimmer than it had before, a sunset that was slowly going dark.

"So we found a shorter way back to the car," Ianto said over the radio. "It only involved falling down two small ravines and running frantically through one farmer's sheep paddock while he threatened us with a shotgun. You'll love it."

"I love how resourceful you are," Jack's voice came back in, thick with innuendo.

"Please, some of us are trying to work," Owen said. He held up the paired PDA, sweeping it down the pillar. If the radiation was doing anything to him, he didn't feel any different.

" _Thank_ you," Gwen said. "We're headed back to Torchwood; we'll probably be out of touch for a couple of hours. We'll be back with the equipment you need and enough food for an army. Or at least enough for five —"

"Four," Owen said, somewhat impatient. He shouldn't have to remind them that they technically had only four members on the team these days, even if one was still kicking around and hadn't stopped moving yet.

" _Five,"_ Gwen said, in a tone that brooked no argument.

***

They took a break after an hour or so, and Tosh went up to the gym/lounge area to break out her laptop to go over the readings Owen had collected for her. By that point, he could no longer deny that he was feeling _fucking weird._

It had come over him slowly while he was working around the light pillar. It was hard, at first, to separate it out from his usual numb nothingness. 

He did actually experience fatigue, of a sort, as if the energy that powered him had to replenish every so often. But this was different. He _felt_ different. By the time Tosh asked for a break over the radio, he was intermittently shivering, involuntary ripples passing through him. He had to stop and look down at his hand for a minute just to experience the strangeness of the sensation. He was cold and ... weak, yes, that was it. Weak. His knees kept wanting to fold up on him.

He felt a little better when he joined Tosh in the corridor, and by the time they were up top, some of the weakness and chill had gone away. He found himself suddenly, achingly missing it. It hadn't been a _good_ feeling, but it had been a feeling.

What the hell was the pillar's radiation doing to him, anyway? Disrupting the energy that kept him alive was a good bet. He found a place to sit on one of the low benches. Tosh sat across from him with one leg tucked up under her and got out her laptop.

"Owen, could you —" She looked up, and something about whatever she saw made her pause. "Owen, are you all right?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" he asked, looking up from his hands clasped between his knees. His entire body ached in a strange, distant way, like a healing bruise.

It just figured that the closest thing to sensation that he'd had in months was mostly pain. And yet the more it faded, the more he wanted to get it back again.

"Well, I don't know, but ... you look sort of pale — Owen!" she said, when he got up and grabbed the PDA.

"No reason I can't get more readings for you, right Tosh?"

"Well ... I suppose," she said, frowning at him. "But we don't know what the radiation is doing to you. I think you should stay up here with me for a while and let it ... dissipate, or whatever it's going to do."

"I'll be fine." He had to try twice to get his hand (the unbroken one) to close properly over the PDA. He hoped Tosh hadn't noticed. But the longer he was up here, the more he could feel the numbness seeping back in to cover up the ache.

At this point, he didn't give a damn if all he felt was pain; he didn't even care if this feeling was the energy core siphoning off or disrupting his energy as long as it gave him something back. He just wanted to _feel_ it.

"I ... suppose so," Tosh said. "I would really like to get some more readings of those energy spikes it's doing. But ... Owen, _please_ be careful down there, would you?"

"I will," he said, nothing but a lie to get her off his back so he could get back down there.

***

It was gradual, whatever it was. It crept back in, around the edges, the longer he stayed down in the energy-core room.

It felt like cold, waves of it, washing through his body. He had to clench his teeth to stop them from chattering when he reported back to Tosh upstairs. It felt like weakness, turning his knees to rubber and occasionally forcing him to sit down against the wall while he ran a few calibrations that Tosh had asked for.

"— Owen, are you all right down there? I think you should come back up and take a break."

"It's okay, Tosh, I'm fine." He looked up at the energy pillar. His head hurt, but .. it _hurt,_ it was pain, it was something that didn't feel like nothing. Slow waves of pain rippled out from his core to his entire body. And he was okay with that. Whatever it was doing to him, at least it wasn't doing it with pure emptiness.

He forced himself back to his feet. His whole body was shaking and weak now; his core hurt, and he felt achingly dry and empty. 

Feeling. He _felt._

Just a little more, he thought. He didn't want to lose this yet, but he also didn't want to push it until he lost it entirely. He wasn't looking for the dark, not right now. He actually felt more alive than he had in months, even though it hurt, all of it hurt.

There was a brief, sudden cramp in his stomach, startling him. He'd almost forgotten what that felt like. He found himself smiling.

"— Owen?"

"I'm fine," he said, catching himself on the wall.

"The more you say you're fine, the less I believe you. Your voice sounds strange."

"I'm just tired. Don't push me," he snapped.

"You're _tired?_ Owen — you don't get tired."

Yes, he did ... but not like this, and it startled him to realize how actually _weird,_ how not-quite-right his brain felt right now. And yet, it was the closest thing to being drunk he'd experienced in months. It was kind of nice. It was actually really nice. He laughed softly, to himself.

"Owen, are you _laughing?_ Wait!" He could hear her get up, the soft click of the laptop laid down. "Owen, I'm coming down."

"No, wait, stay there!" Worry managed to push through the aching, almost-pleasant haze. "Tosh, no, stay up there. We don't know what it'll do to you."

"We don't know what it's doing to _you!_ Jack!" she said, sounding desperate.

'We don't need Jack," Owen said shortly. He was still leaning on the wall as the room tilted queasily around him. Okay, it was definitely doing _something._

"Owen," Jack said over the radio, a firm and commanding voice like a lifeline. "Owen, get out of that room."

"Trying," Owen said. In some strange, distant way, he was scared now. For himself ... and for them. "Stay out. Both of you. It ..." He took a step forward, and his rubbery knees folded.

Tosh and Jack both saying his name was the last thing he heard before the dark swallowed him. For the last time, he thought, as it washed away the headache and the hurt.

***

But it wasn't. 

He came back to himself slowly, still consumed by a distant ache. He woke to the damp weight of Jack's coat over him (it smelled like Jack, warmly familiar), and the stiff surface of one of the alien benches under him. He felt cold and heavy. There was an argument going on over his head.

"— sure it's safe to be in here? I mean look at him, what it _did_ —"

"He's _not_ dead," Tosh said, sounding on the verge of tears. "I mean, he _is_ dead, but ... you know what I mean. He wasn't feeling well earlier, but he wouldn't _say_ — and he got better when we brought him up here, I have to believe —"

"Tosh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean ..." The earlier voice was Ianto; Owen recognized it now. "I'm just saying," Ianto went on. "Listen, Tosh, I think it'd be a good idea to clear out of here until we know more."

"There's no radiation up here." Tosh made a small sound, and he realized to his shock that she _was_ crying, just a little bit. "It's not unsafe. I'm staying with him."

"We can move him down to the SUV —"

"No one is moving me anywhere," Owen said without opening his eyes. There were a couple of mutual intakes of breath. "I'm not dead. No deader than usual, I mean."

In fact, he thought that he was, in fact, slightly _less_ dead than usual. Or maybe more so; it was hard to tell. Something had definitely changed. He still hurt, especially a stabbing pain through his head, and another one somewhere in the chest-abdomen region. He felt faintly nauseated, and his throat was so dry it seemed to cramp up when he tried to talk.

"Owen?" That was Tosh's voice, along with a light hand on his arm. Which he couldn't really, properly feel. It just figured that, if he was going to get some sensation back, the only sensations he'd get would be pain — it was very much in keeping with his life so far.

"Here," he sighed wearily, and opened his eyes. 

Tosh was bending over him. She put an arm around his shoulders, helping him sit up. They were in the alien gym/lounge, as he'd thought. He squinted past her at Ianto, who was now considerably less of a muddy mess than the rest of them.

"Did you seriously go all the way back to Torchwood and change clothes?"

Ianto huffed out a soft laugh. He was standing at the low table next to the couches with a hand on a pizza-box lid, and just as Owen took that in, the smell hit him and he had a sudden, staggering moment of weirdly mixed feelings, overwhelming nausea along with a powerful craving so intense it took his breath away and also a wave of icy cold rippling through his entire body.

"Owen?" Tosh said. She sounded worried. "You're ... shivering. I didn't know you could do that."

"We all ought to leave until we know for certain that it's safe," Ianto said.

"I want a piece of that pizza," Owen said. His mouth tingled, and a wave of strange prickling sensations rippled down his throat and stitched pain through his abdomen.

"Owen," Tosh said cautiously, "you can't eat."

"I know!" It was ripped from his throat with desperation. He was shivering and he was aware of it, full-bore shivers ripping through him. He _knew_ what would happen if he tried. But he was just so fucking cold, and for the first time in weeks and weeks, food smelled _good._ He didn't know how to take that, or what to do about it.

"Can we try something?" Ianto asked. He retrieved a plastic bottle from the table, hitched up a trouser leg and went down to one knee beside the bench. "Coke; it came along with the pizzas. If you want to try —"

Owen tore it out of his hand and swallowed half of it without even thinking about it, dimly aware of Tosh's startled sound. He couldn't really feel it on his tongue, or the sharp fizz in his throat. But he felt the sugar and caffeine hit his system, a feeling so intense that his whole body vibrated with it, as if waves of glucose were rolling outward from his core and tingling to the tips of his fingers.

He collapsed against Tosh, numb fingers clutching helplessly at her back. He wasn't fixed; he was still dead. But he could ... he could _feel,_ at least in the sense of the sugar hit from the soda washing outward through his body, sweeping away the ache and leaving a spreading desperate relief in its wake.

"What's happening?" Tosh asked, her voice carrying an edge of slight panic. She still had a supportive arm around him, and patted his back nervously.

"It's all right," Owen gasped out. It wasn't, but he didn't know how to handle the conflicting feelings he was currently feeling. "I ... I think I needed that. Could I have a piece of that pizza?"

Ianto stared at him for a minute, then gave him a brief nod and got up.

"Owen, what's happening?" Tosh's laugh was strange and baffled. "Are you ... alive? You're still just as cold."

"I don't know." He couldn't figure it out right now; all he could really think about was eating something. Ianto came back with a slice of pizza neatly laid out on a paper plate, paper napkin tucked at the edge. Owen didn't care about any of the rest of it; all he could think of was _food._ He grabbed the slice off the plate while Ianto was still holding it, stuffed half of it into his mouth and nearly choked. But ... it was _food,_ he could _taste_ it. 

In the grand scheme of things, it was extremely mediocre pizza; it had been hauled out to the middle of nowhere, and was cool enough to have congealed slightly. He didn't care. It was an explosion of salt and fat and flavor on his tongue, and his body was clamoring _more, more._

"Should someone, um ... get Jack?" Tosh asked.

"No," Owen said indistinctly through a mouthful of cheese.

"Yes," Ianto said at the same time. He tapped his comm. "Jack, Owen's awake. I think you should come up here."

"Are you three still in the ship?" Jack asked over the radio, sounding annoyed and slightly worried. "How's Owen?"

"Uh ..." Ianto looked over at Owen, who was cramming the rest of the slice of pizza into his mouth. "I _really_ think you ought to come up here."

Jack showed up fast enough that he had clearly been in the ship too. By this point Owen had eaten another slice of pizza at a less frantic pace and was starting to think maybe he'd better lay off it for a few minutes, at least, to see how his body was going to react to it. He was a doctor; he understood about refeeding syndrome, not to mention the entire issue of what his body was going to _do_ with all of this. But he didn't feel bad. In fact the general aching and discomfort had faded a lot. He almost missed it; he was afraid of slipping back down into the bleak nothing.

Jack stopped in the doorway and stared at Owen draining the rest of the bottle of Coke. "You remember what happens when you drink things, right?"

"I know what used to happen." Owen shook the bottle; empty. "Now I'm not so sure. Is there any more of this? How about beer? Oh — coffee! There must be coffee around here somewhere."

"Is he ... alive?" Gwen asked, coming up behind Jack. She was damp and brushing twigs out of her hair.

 _"He_ can hear you," Owen said. He took his own pulse, just in case he might have failed to notice something important like, oh, breathing. "And nope. Still dead." He prodded at the splinted finger just in case it had decided to heal up a bit, but nope, still floppy.

"Right," Jack said. He scooped up his coat off the bench. "We're calling Martha."

There was a sharp flurry of protest from the others, a shocked "No!" from Gwen and a low echo of it from Ianto. Tosh closed a hand over Owen's wrist. "We're not turning him over to UNIT," she said, and there was a core of steel in her voice.

"I didn't say UNIT, I said _Martha._ As a friend thing, not an official thing. Trust me," Jack said, shrugging into his coat, "if UNIT wants to get their hands on Owen, they have to go through all of us, got it? So how about we call in another doctor, Owen, that okay with you?"

"Yes, whatever," Owen said. His mind was on other things. "Does anyone have anything sweet? Biscuit, chocolate, lint-covered throat lozenge, I'm not particular."

There was a moment when they all just stared at him. Ianto snapped out of it first. "There's a packet of biscuits we picked up when we stopped for petrol, on the drive here." He made a vague gesture. "It's in the SUV."

"The SUV is back at the road, isn't it?" Tosh asked.

"We managed to get it almost all the way here this time," Gwen said, swiping her damp hair out of her face. "And, er, there's a taillight out now. That farmer really does _not_ like us."

"Could have had something to do with almost driving over one of his cows," Ianto said.

"Oi, it was dark and raining! Got us here, didn't I?"

There was a sudden flicker in the lights, dipping almost to total darkness and then brightening again. Owen felt a sharp cold wash of — _something_ , a sweep of shivering strangeness that flooded him for an instant, every part of him going weak before sensation, such as it was, came back.

"Owen?" Tosh murmured. She was still sitting with her hand on his arm, close enough to have felt him shiver.

"That power supply isn't going to last long," Jack said, and now they were all looking at Owen with various shades of worried expressions. 

Owen jerked his arm away from Tosh's light, sympathetic touch. "Will one of you lot get me biscuits before whatever this is wears off, then!"

"Right, then." Ianto reached for a raincoat draped over one of the pieces of alien gym equipment. "I'll fetch it."

"And coffee!" Owen shouted after him.

***

The biscuits were amazing, including the slightly dry cardboard taste. The coffee actually _was_ amazing, as Ianto's coffee generally managed to be, even in the woods in the rain in the middle of the night.

Owen was nibbling on biscuits while sitting crosslegged beside the light pillar, as close to it as he could get. The closer he was, the better he felt. He was holding a PDA for Tosh, picking up the fluctuations in the pillar's emissions.

Tosh, wearing one of the NBC suits that Gwen and Ianto had brought, was stretched out on the floor, busy with the inner works of a hatch she had managed to pry open on the floor.

The light pillar was definitely winding down. It flickered occasionally, and every time it did, Owen _felt_ it, a strange sort of shudder through his chest.

"Tosh," he said to her hips and legs, which was all of her he could currently see. Without the chemsuit, it would have been a very pleasant view. "Tosh, love ... you won't be able to fix it."

"I can try, can't I?" she said, muffled. Or something like that; between the suit and the fact that the top half of her was down in the hatch, he could barely hear her.

There was a clatter of boots in the hallway and Jack came in, with a typical bounce and flare of his coat. "Owen, hey there, Martha's on the line and she —"

"Oi, you're not wearing a chemsuit!" Owen snapped at him.

"Oi, neither are you," Jack retorted. "Anyway, Martha's overseas, she can't possibly get back in the next couple of days, but I sent her over your readings and she wants to talk to you." He held out his wrist, tilted forward, and Martha's face and torso materialized in front of Owen.

Nice little piece of tech, that.

"Hello there, Dr. Jones," Owen said with cheerfulness he didn't feel. "Don't want to come up and slum with us in Torchwood this time?"

"I wish," Martha said, rolling her eyes. Her hair was pinned up and she was wearing a lab coat and looked tired. "It'd be an improvement over being up to my elbows in — well, never mind that. I've had a look over your readings, but it's not a substitute for being there. How are you feeling now?"

"Fine." It was actually true .... well, for values of "fine" calibrated for his present condition, anyway. Martha looked skeptical. "No, really. Still can't feel a bloody thing, but I can taste again." He stuffed another biscuit in his mouth to prove it.

Martha's mouth twitched as she tried and failed not to grin. "You're making me hungry. Jack, could you turn so I can see the ... what are you calling it, anyway?"

"Big bleedin' light pillar wossit," Owen said, as Jack rotated to give Martha a view of the light pillar. Her image rotated too, so now he was seeing her in profile.

"That's very ... evocative, Owen," Martha said.

Owen tapped his comm. "Ianto, you around?"

After a moment, the slightly breathless reply came back. "Upstairs with Gwen, stripping down equipment for removal to Torchwood — why?"

"Need you to name a thing."

"What, _now?"_

"This down here, the tall sodding light thing."

"I haven't even _seen_ it," Ianto complained. "Er ... Lightshaft?"

"I don't think I can bring myself to call it that," Tosh said, her voice perfectly clear over the comm although she was still buried in the guts of the equipment under the floor.

"You're welcome to rename it if you have a better idea," Owen said. "No? Lightshaft it is. Carry on, Dr. Jones."

"I think I forgot what you lot were like," Martha said musingly. "Very well, the best guess I have from the data I have in front of me is that the, uh .... lightshaft is actually disrupting the energy that's keeping you alive, so your body switched over to another source of energy: food. What happened down there earlier was you collapsing from hypoglycemia. Does that fit with your own observations, Dr. Harper?"

Huh. The feelings he'd been having earlier — the cold, shivering weakness; the nauseating ache in his middle — did actually fit with hunger, now that he thought about it. "Can I _do_ that? Switch to another power source like going onto a battery backup? It shouldn't work like that. I'm fucking _dead."_ He enunciated that with care, in case anyone nearby had missed noticing. "I don't have a functional digestive system."

"Except you do, obviously," Martha said. "There's nothing at all wrong with it. It's just shut down most of the time."

"All of the time," Owen said tightly.

"Do you feel ill?"

"No," he had to admit.

"Perhaps the radiation from the pillar is facilitating a power switchover in addition to blocking the energy you absorbed."

"So what happens when it stops?" Gwen asked over the radio, and Owen realized they were all listening in on the comms. Brilliant.

"Well ... we don't know, do we?" Martha said. "Owen, how are you feeling now?"

"Like I'm tired of being a guinea pig for brand new ways for my body to fuck me over."

***

It was later — much later, Jack gone back up top after a firm hand-squeeze on Owen's shoulder, and Martha back to whatever she was doing wherever she was — when Owen finally managed to get Tosh to come out of the hatch and come with him out into the hallway where she could take off the chemsuit hood and eat the handful of biscuits he'd saved for her.

"Owen, no, I can't take the time," Tosh protested, sitting with her back against the wall, but she was saying it through a mouthful of biscuit crumbs. Her hair was lank, pulled half out of her ponytail and plastered to her forehead and neck. Owen had half forgotten how sweaty and miserable it was wearing one of those things, let alone head-down as she had been for the last couple of hours. She looked gray.

"Tosh, you can't fix this. Nobody can fix it. It was built by bloody aliens more advanced than we'll be in a thousand years. You're brilliant, but you're not a ... an alien computer."

As if to underscore the impossibility of it, the lights browned out again. This time the lights stayed down long enough for the corridor to go completely dark, the gravity shifting dizzyingly toward what he had already half forgotten was the actual orientation of gravity on this planet. A cold wave of shivering swept through him, and he fell, planting his hand on the floor to stop himself from pitching over completely.

"Owen?" Tosh said anxiously. Her gloved hands curled around his arm and his upper shoulder, steadying him.

"I'm fine," he said blindly, into the grasping dark.

"Owen ..." She kept a grip on him, until the light steadied, until he looked up at her. "Owen, what if you're .... dependent on it, now? What if it's the only thing — what if I can't —"

"No what-ifs, Tosh." He finally got his vision back, properly stabilized, focused on her face. "We did all right before we found this ship. I reckon it'll be all right, after."

He reckoned no such thing, but if he _did_ drop dead when the ship's power core went down, he wouldn't have to think about it. And he didn't want her distressed until then; no point in that, both of them worrying about it.

***

When the ship's power did go out, it was strangely anticlimactic.

One minute Tosh was working, Owen relaying readings to her.

And then there was a sudden crash into dark.

A wave of cold washed over him and he fell. His cheek hit the floor. There was a tilting sensation as the artificial gravity went out for good.

"Owen," Tosh gasped. Her hands were on his back, but the dark washed in, and took him before he had an answer to give her.

***

They had wrapped him in Jack's coat again, but this time the air was cold and damp. He was in the back of the SUV ... the back door was open, letting in a wash of cool wet air, and the back row of seats were folded down so he could lie across them. He was so cold his teeth were chattering.

And Jack and Tosh were fighting just outside the open back door.

"Jack, you can't," Tosh was saying, her voice thick. Owen struggled to prop himself up on an elbow. There was gray, wan daylight outside the SUV, and for the first and only time, he got a good look at the ship, between the mist-draped trees. "We don't know what I can learn from studying it. It could help him. Jack, _please._ "

"We don't have a choice," Jack said. His back was to Owen; he was in his shirtsleeves, a pale blue shirt soaked through with water, his braces slashing across it in the cold gray morning ... or afternoon, perhaps; the light was omnidirectional and timeless. Ianto and Gwen stood nearby, both of them looking wounded and miserable, as if they didn't know what side to be on. "This is what we do. There's too much inside that ship we can't risk getting out on this planet. The military will be here. UNIT. Do you want _them_ to have it?"

Owen knew just enough of Tosh's past from her files to recognize the emotional dagger aimed at the middle of her spine. He heard her breath catch and tried to lurch upright. It didn't work; he sank onto his back, the underside of the SUV's ceiling spinning above him.

"Tosh, listen," Jack said, his voice gentle now. Owen couldn't see them, but he could picture Jack moving forward, his hand resting on Tosh's shoulder. "We have as much of it as we could get out. You can take it back to the Hub, dissect it at your leisure there. We have to destroy the rest. There's no choice."

"Jack, we could give it another couple of days," Gwen said.

"We can't. We're not going to. —Tosh, where are you going?"

"Walking home!" Tosh's voice came from farther away.

"Tosh!" Gwen said. "I'll go after her." —growing farther away, too.

Then it was just Jack and Ianto. Owen made an effort and pushed himself upright, propped on his shaking arms. The ship loomed above them, pearly in the gray light. Rain glistened on its surface. It was beautiful and alien, nothing that was meant to exist here on this planet.

"Isn't it possible," Ianto said quietly. He had a hand planted in the middle of Jack's back. "A few more days ..."

"Weather report says it'll clear this evening. And I've cashed in favors I didn't have to give, to keep the military and UNIT off us this long." Jack's voice was almost too quiet to hear.

Ianto's voice took on that brisk doing-things-for-the-Hub tone. "Want me to do the honors, then?"

"No," Jack said. "It should be me."

You bastard, Owen wanted to say, but he didn't really have it in him. Because Jack was fucking _right,_ and what kind of place was Torchwood, that it made him this sure? But it was true. There was too much in that ship that the government shouldn't have, that UNIT shouldn't have. There was too much chance of some kid, or some old duffer out for a tramp through the woods, coming onto this thing and touching something they shouldn't, some part of it the Torchwood Three team hadn't found yet, exploding or dissolving into a pile of goo or turning into a ravening monster to go tearing through the locals.

Keeping people safe. Saving lives. It was what they did.

"Fire in the hole," Jack murmured. He looked toward the gray bulk of the ship and tapped something on his wrist strap.

Owen expected a fireball. But what happened instead was queerer and more unnerving. The ship collapsed in on itself, folding and dissolving and crumbling in the rain. When it had finished disintegrating, there was nothing left but heaps of black smut that looked like charcoal, and a great cavern gouged out of the side of the hill.

"Wow," Ianto murmured.

"Really something, isn't it?" Jack said. "Kasperide pinpoint bomb. Always knew that'd come in handy someday." He let out a long shuddering breath, curled his hand around Ianto's arm for a moment and leaned into him — then turned away, gave Ianto's arm a quick squeeze and came back to the SUV. He paused when he saw Owen watching him.

"Thought you were out," Jack said.

"I don't sleep."

"Uh-huh." Jack crawled into the back with him. Owen, startled, struggled to the side, giving Jack room. The back of the SUV smelled like rain and soot and the general smell of damp Jack. Jack leaned out and slammed the back door. Ianto climbed into the front.

"You were a right bastard to Tosh," Owen said conversationally. "Really thinking about pushing you out right now."

"Not the worst idea." Jack curled a hand lightly around the back of Owen's neck, as the SUV jolted into motion. His fingers pressed in; Owen could even feel it through his numb skin. He was shivering, he realized, and he didn't know how to stop, or what would make it stop. A whole world of options had just closed to him.

Jack pulled Owen's head against his shoulder, and Owen resisted with everything in him for about half a second and then leaned against him, as the SUV rocked on the rough ground under its tires and the rain came down even harder, sluicing over the windows.

They stopped to pick up the girls a few minutes later. Jack climbed forward into the front, and Gwen pushed the seat back into place. Owen curled up with his back against it; there wasn't much room back here, but he had no intention of climbing over, not right now. He was vaguely aware of Tosh standing up on her knees and leaning over the back of the seat to tuck Jack's coat around him. Then she took his hand, and they drove back to Cardiff like that, with Tosh leaning over the back of the seat and holding his hand in her rain-damp fingers.

***

Back at Torchwood, after.

He was still functional — as functional as he'd ever been, anyway. He spent a couple of days being cold and slow and miserable while his energy levels gradually rebounded to normal.

He tried eating a biscuit, down in the privacy of the autopsy bay. He ended up spitting it out into the sink. He couldn't taste it anyway.

A week after the spaceship, Tosh came down into the autopsy bay carrying something that looked vaguely like Jack's fancy future wristwatch thing. It was chrome and shiny and covered in alien gadgetry, and Tosh looked very pleased with herself in a quiet kind of way.

"Owen, hold out your hand?" He did, and she strapped it onto his wrist. "Are you up for an experiment?" she asked, and he nodded, because he was always up for a bit of something different, and what did he have to lose anyway?

Tosh pressed a stud on the side of the wristwatch. It began to radiate a sort of gentle pinkish glow, a sunset kind of light.

"Tosh, what —"

"Wait," she said, touching his wrist. So he waited, a few long minutes, getting bored and a bit tetchy and hungry and —

Wait. Hungry?

"Tosh?" he said, looking at her in surprise.

Tosh grinned at him. "Does it work? How do you feel?"

"I ... I don't know," he said, dazed. "Do you have —"

"Coffee?" said a voice from above him, and Ianto came down the steps to the autopsy bay.

"I ... no ... what." He took the cup because it was that or drop it. Ianto smiled at him, and Owen took a cautious sip, something he never dared allow himself anymore.

It was exactly like he had always taken it, with a little bit of foam and a dash of milk. And he could _taste_ it.

"Tosh," he said breathlessly. "What is this?"

She was beaming now. "We developed it between us, Martha and Jack and me. We just had to get the energy frequency right; that was the really hard part. It has all kinds of resonances across the whole spectrum. And the power supply — but that doesn't matter. You don't have much of a charge, is the point, but we could work on that. The important thing is, how do you feel?"

"Wondering if anyone has a biscuit about," Owen said, and Ianto grinned and trotted up the stairs. He was back a moment later with a tray containing a variety of biscuits, croissants, donuts and other pastries that had probably been lurking up in the living-person section of the Hub. He had also brought Jack and Gwen in his wake.

"Does it work?" Jack asked, hanging over the railing above the autopsy bay.

"You're on notice," Owen told him, and then he made an effort to cram an entire croissant into his mouth. He was never really one for croissants, but right now he'd happily eat an entire French bakery. "Oh, my _god."_

"You shouldn't wear it too long at one time," Tosh told him, her smile so bright it could power the wristwatch thing all on its own. She took a donut off the edge of Ianto's tray, and her smile flattened out into something more serious. "Even aside from the charging issues, which I hope we can work out. We don't know what long-term exposure to that radiation is going to do to you."

"I don't care," Owen said through half a jam-filled donut, dusted with powered sugar. "Tosh, you're my favorite."

Tosh glowed.

"Hey now, we all helped," Jack said from above.

"Owen, how do you feel?" Gwen asked.

"I hate you people," Owen said, cramming in another donut. God, he could go out for drinks with them now, couldn't he? He could join in on pizza nights in the Hub. He couldn't fucking believe this. "You hid this from me. You're all on notice. If you get hurt, I hope you don't expect doctor services until you've groveled adequately."

Jack laughed. "He likes it," he said to no one in particular.

"You're on notice in particular, Harkness, and so are the rest of you," Owen got out around a mouthful of chocolate donut, but what he meant was: _Thank you, thank you; you idiots are the best fucking idiots anyone ever had, what's the matter with all of you, please never stop being you; I fucking love you guys._

The really crazy thing was, from the way they were grinning at him over the railing, from Tosh's light hand curled gently around his arm, from the way they just _stayed_ , and Ianto held the tray for him to pick out whatever it was that he wanted from half a bakery's worth of selections ... they all heard everything he didn't say.


End file.
